lpr not working - scheduler not responding

Question

I'm running Ubuntu 13.04 on my computer at work, which has networked printers. I have previously been able to print using the lpr command, but recently this has stopped working.

$ lpr test
lpr: Error - scheduler not responding.

$ lpstat -t
scheduler is running
no system default destination
lpstat: Bad Request
lpstat: Bad Request
lpstat: Bad Request
lpstat: Bad Request
lpstat: Bad Request

$ ps aux | grep cups
root      1153  0.0  0.1  73500  3552 ?        Ss   Sep08   0:01 /usr/sbin/cupsd -F
root      1212  0.0  0.0  70428  1464 ?        Ss   Sep08   0:00 /usr/sbin/cups-browsed

I also don't see any printers if I enter the print dialog from a program; I can only print to a pdf.

Does anyone know what's gone wrong? What config files do you need to see?

edit: I'm adding some additional information.

I'm using a remote print server, and my ~/.cups/client.conf contains only this line:

ServerName print1.eecis.udel.edu

I tried removing the cups package and installing it again, and noticed during the installation the line

"lpinfo: Bad Request" appeared. 

Answer 1

The Arch Bugtracker knows about this bug/regression which is introduced in the 1.6 cups version:

The default IPP version for requests is now 2.0 (STR #3929)

And most likely your cups server has an older cups version which still defaults to the older IPP version. The workaround from the ARCH wiki:

Using a CUPS 1.6.x client with a <= 1.5.x server

As of CUPS version 1.6, the client defaults to IPP 2.0. If the server uses CUPS <= 1.5 / IPP <= 1.1, the client doesn't downgrade the protocol automatically and thus can't communicate with the server. A workaround (undocumented as of 2013-05-07, but see this bug report) is to put the following in /etc/cups/client.conf:

ServerName HOSTNAME-OR-IP-ADDRESS[:PORT]/version=1.1

Answer 2

I know this is an old thread, but I came across a similar problem:

root@LabelMaker:/home/funvalley/label_maker# lp merged.pdf
lp: Error - scheduler not responding.
root@LabelMaker:/home/funvalley/label_maker# lpstat -t
scheduler is not running
no system default destination
lpstat: Bad file descriptor
lpstat: Bad file descriptor
lpstat: Bad file descriptor
lpstat: Bad file descriptor
lpstat: Bad file descriptor

I found that it complaining that it didn't have a default printer destination.

To give it a default destination I went into cups(http://localhost:631), manage printers, clicked the printer that I wanted be the default, clicked the administrator dropdown, and set to the system default.